Triage.me Gets Patients to the Best Care via SMS

Dan Wilson (left) and Mark Olschesky (right) went to the Milwaukee Build Health Hackathon hoping to build useful tools to improve healthcare for both providers and patients. They didn’t expect that they’d come out of the hackathon with a brand new business.

Dan and Mark focused on one particular problem: they saw that uninsured patients with limited access to health care clinics frequently used emergency rooms for their basic medical needs. The solution was clear: direct uninsured people to a community health care clinic or triage. That’s exactly what their app, Triage.me, does.

When someone is in need of care and doesn’t know a local clinic near them, they text a local Triage.me number. After answering a few questions about symptoms and providing an address, Triage.me texts back the nearest clinic, hours, directions, and possible methods of public transportation. The app also notifies the clinic of the patient’s symptoms and pending arrival.

Don’t have a smart-phone? No problem. Triage.me is accessible to anyone and everyone with texting capabilities, powered by Twilio SMS.

Dan and Mark are in the process of beta testing Triage.me in Wisconsin and Washington D.C. Their hope is to grow and refine the app, and make it available in more cities. This team also was the winner of our Meet Windows Azure developer contest last month. Given the fact that Triage.me is merely three months old and has already hit the ground running, it will be interesting to see where they go from here.